Geographic Information Systems (GIS) clients capture, store, manage and display data elements according to geospatial coordinates. For example, mapping clients, such as Google Maps, render maps, satellite imagery and other geospatial data over a two-dimensional surface. Similarly, earth-browsing clients, such as Google Earth, render satellite imagery, terrain, vectors and other geospatial data over a three-dimensional geometry representing the Earth's surface. Thus, a user of Google Maps or Google Earth may navigate across the two-dimensional surface or three-dimensional geometry while data and images corresponding to geographical locations are presented to the user.
In many instances, it may be desirable to serve a geospatial asset, such as a 2-D map or 3-D globe, to multiple groups of end users without providing each end user group access to the entire geospatial asset or access to the same portions of the geospatial asset. For instance, for legal, strategic or other reasons, an administrator, manager or owner of a geospatial asset may only want to share with a particular end user group the high-resolution data contained within the asset that is pertinent to that group. Conventionally, to provide such particularized access to the geospatial data, it was necessary to create and maintain individual geospatial assets for each end user group, which is quite expensive and both time- and space-intensive.